Tammy Watson and her wife Mary, a personal support worker, moved in to their new home just south of Fernleigh in North Frontenac Township in July. One of the ‘features’ of their new property was an old metal drop which contained several licence plates.

“The first one I picked up said ‘March, ’70,’” she said. “That’s when I was born so I knew I was home.”

Watson had been a civil servant in Durham Region, in law enforcement, for 28 years. But before that, she said she’d been torn between two worlds.

“My family is from Deseronto but I went to high school in North York,” she said. “So I grew up between the two worlds of Jane and Finch and Deseronto.

“I like the country better.”

So, after vacationing in Bon Echo Park (their dog is even named Echo), they started looking around for a place in the area.

But, still needing a way to make ends meet, Watson looked back to her days in North York and a love of shop class.

“I was the first girl in North York to win the Industrial Arts Award,” she said.

And so Trillium and Maple Woods Handywoman Services was born.

“I’m by no means a licensed tradesperson,” she said. “But I have lots of tools and I know how to use them.

“And I’m pretty good with a paint brush.”

She started off in the area doing work for Fernleigh Lodge and has some gigs with other lodges as well as private homeowners, she said.

“If you don’t need a general contractor but don’t have the time, tools, or expertise, I’m the one to do it,” she said. “I’ve had a couple of callbacks, so . . .”

The back of her business card reads: “furniture assembly, minor repairs, painting, shelving installation, general maintenance, organization, seasonal property checks, yard and garden care.”

“All of the jobs I’ve ever had have been helping people fix their problems,” she said.

She said that so far, all of the local businesses have been “very supportive, it’s a great environment here.”

To contact Watson, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 613-479-0425 or 905-404-5056.

By the way, she’s also a certified crochet instructor who runs workshops.

When Fernleigh Lodge first opened 95 years ago on Kashwakamak Lake, in what was then known as Clarendon and Miller Township, the region was just being opened up for tourists and cottagers.

The lodge was located on a one-lane road. It had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. All the logs for its heritage buildings had been floated down the lake and then hewn by hand. In the early years Fernleigh Lodge was supported by fishermen, and that was men only until the 1940s, mostly from the United States.

John Ahr, the original owner, saw the potential of float planes and built the lodge as one of the early fly-in resorts, to save visitors the long and difficult drive from New York State, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio.

The lodge had one of the first gas-powered boat motors, a 2hp motor. Since there was only one motor, they would tie the boats together, use the motor to pull the boats down the lake and then they would drift back.

The lodge today is far removed from those early days, but at its core is Kashwakamak Lake, a prime fishing destination, and one of the most beautiful lakes along the upper Mississippi watershed.

Along with the newly constructed premium suites at the lodge are a number of original cabins, many of which have recently been fully renovated within the original frame.

The main dining room and kitchen are housed in the original log building. The hand-hewn beams are intact as are the well-preserved walls and floors, although the facilities have been fully redesigned for modern use. Wifi is available on the comfortable covered deck overseeing Kashwakamak Lake. The view is the same; the lake is the same as it was back then; but getting away from it all is different at Fernleigh Lodge today than it was back then.

Kevin Phillips has been coming to Fernleigh Lodge all his life. His family made the trip up to the lodge each summer from their home in Ohio when he was a kid, and his parents became Fernleigh Lodge's owners in 1981. They were dedicated to keeping up the tradition of John Ahr and his nephew John Green, who took over the lodge when Ahr died in 1961.

At one time there were a number of lodges and marinas up and down Kash Lake, as it is known locally, including: Twin Oaks, Evergreen and Aragain. Now, only Fernleigh remains, and in order to continue to thrive, Kevin Phillips, with his wife Melissa, have made major changes to the facilities and programming, adapting the lodge for year-round use.

When Kevin inherited the lodge from his parents, he decided to make the lodge his focus, while still maintaining KP Plumbing, the business he has been running in North Frontenac for many years.

“I love this place; always have,” he said, “and I knew that in order to continue to operate we needed to upgrade, offer more activities, make cabins available year-round for ice fishers, skiers, hikers - everyone who can appreciate how beautiful the four seasons are in this region.”

The premium cabins that have been built were the first step in the transformation of the lodge. They are two-storey, 1100 square foot buildings that sleep seven and include fully equipped kitchens and living rooms, with sun rooms facing the bay.

Renovations to the lodge’s main kitchen and dining room followed, and then full-scale upgrades to a number of the original cabins were made. There are now tennis courts, trails, playgrounds, a beach, and many other features at the lodge for the use of patrons. Packages are available that include meals and motor boats.

“Now that we are open year-round, we are hosting more weddings and conferences or retreats, hunters, and families seeking a getaway from the daily grind. We rent by the week in the summer but the terms are more flexible in the off-season,” said Kevin

The latest venture at the lodge is a sports store, which is opening this week. Fishing rods and reels, tackle, and other equipment, clothing of all kinds, and more is available at the store, which will be open year-round.

“Now that we are the only lodge on the lake, and one of the only places anywhere in North Frontenac offering year-round accommodations, we decided to bring our sporting goods store, which had been located in Brockville, back to North Frontenac,” he said.

North Frontenac residents, cottagers and visitors now have a full service fishing store available all season long.

Fernleigh Lodge can be accessed off Road 506 by taking the South Road at Fernleigh and following the signs. For more information go to Fernleighlodge.com or call toll free 1-866-459-9909.  

It was in late August that I went to interview Lee-Anne White at her home on Road 506 at Fernleigh, which at one time was a full-fledged hamlet with a post office, a store and a school, but is now only a clutch of houses around a crossroad.

I was accompanied by Jesse Mills, the videographer for the Frontenac County 150th anniversary project, and when we arrived Lee-Anne had a bandage on her leg and was limping when she opened the door for us.

“The nurse was just here this morning,” she said, “to change the dressing on my leg.”

She had hurt her leg by dropping a piece of wood on it as she was feeding the box stove in her basement to take off the morning chill a few days earlier. But though her leg was slowing her down, she still had a basin overflowing with bread dough in the kitchen and was de-frosting five pounds of ground beef to make meatballs for a family reunion that was coming up on the weekend.

Aside from her leg, something else was bothering her. Her car, a 2010 model, was in need of some work.

“They tell me that I don't drive it enough. That's why the linkage needs to be fixed and it needs new tires. I haven't told my son yet but I think I'll trade it in on a new one rather than bother with it,” she said.

Lee-Anne Kelford was born at Ompah on January 9, 1915, and this week she turns 100. She remembers the kinds of efforts that were required to survive on the Canadian shield farmland in the days before electricity, cars and other modern conveniences. What money her family made came from her father shoeing horses or milling wood, but most of the food they ate they had either grown, gathered or slaughtered from their own herds of cattle, sheep and pigs. For chairs they used burlap bags stuffed with straw or hay. They went barefoot in the summer and in the winter wore gumboots with homespun yarn straight off the sheep wrapped around them for warmth. When she was coming home from school with her brothers and sisters her mother would meet them with baskets and they had to fill the baskets with wild strawberries or raspberries on the way home. In the spring they would catch hundreds of suckers and salt them for winter eating. In the summer they picked blueberries and apples, worked in the garden and helped harvest hay and grain.

While the large 17-member Kelford family, seven brothers and seven sisters, father and mother and hard-bitten grandmother Jane Kelford, never had a lot of money, they were certainly not the poorest family around

“We were better off than those that were further down the line, I'd say. We always had enough to eat; we had cows and sheep and a big garden and a root cellar and mother was always baking biscuits or something, so we had no complaints,” said Lee Anne.

She still talks about her father's capacity to build things and make things work on their property. Although he could not read or write, he managed to build a steam-powered sawmill, a smithy and whatever the family needed to get by.

However, he may have taken on a bit much when it came to orthopedics.

When Lee-Anne was seven years old she fell out of an apple tree in an old orchard where she was picking apples with her mother. Of course there was no 911 to call. As she recalls it, she had driven the horse-drawn wagon to the orchard while her mother held her baby sister Elsie. Since her arm was broken and the bone was sticking out, her mother popped Elsie on Lee-Anne's lap and tied the baby to her so she wouldn't fall off. Her mother then drove home.

When they got back to Lee-Anne's father's wood and smith shop back at Ompah, he looked at her arm quickly and decided it needed to be set.

So, “he took an old cedar block, about 6 inches long, that was lying around,” in Lee-Anne's words, cut it and augured out the centre, then cut it again and split it to fit her small arm. He put her arm in and tied it together snugly with string, forcing the bone back into place at the same time. The next day her brother Sam got into a fight with another brother, Wyman, and Sam's wrist ended up being broken. Their father set that wrist as well.

The children then had to immerse their arms in a barrel of ice water repeatedly over the next two days, presumably to keep the swelling down. The treatment was successful in both cases - to a point. Lee-Anne was able to use her arm afterwards, but could not raise it all the way up to the top of her head, and her brother developed growths on his wrist.

At the time and to this day, after 93 years have passed, Lee White supports everything her father did that day.

“A neighbour said he should take us to a doctor but there was no doctor close by and we didn't have money to pay for a doctor anyway,” she said.

Her father lived a long life as well. He died at the age of 97 in 1977.

When Lee-Anne was older she took a job at a new lodge on Kashwakamak Lake that was opened up by an Ahr family from the United States. The lodge, which became known as the Fernleigh Lodge, is open to this day. She worked there for seven years, cooking and cleaning for over 100 guests at a time, and in the winters she worked at the Trout Lake Hotel in Ompah.

It was at Fernleigh Lodge that she met her husband, Melvin White, who was a guide in the summer and fall and trapped in the winter time. Melvin was from Plevna, and although he ran away from home at age 16, when the couple got married, Lee-Anne ended up living at Melvin's taking care of Melvin's parents and their farm for at least one winter during the 1930s, when she wasn't drawn back to Ompah to help her own family get by.

Eventually, Melvin was given a one acre piece of land on what is now Road 506 and the Whites built a 23 x 14 foot shack for themselves. Afterwards they built the house where Lee-Anne still lives on the same property (Melvin died in 2009).

“We scratched I tell you, but we never borrowed a cent in our lives. When we were building our house, with help from his half brother and uncle, I said to Melvin I'd rather eat one meal a day than go into debt.”

The couple had three sons, George, Andy and Danny. Lee-Anne ended up taking a job drawing mail from Fernleigh to Cloyne, a job she kept for 38 years.

At her 100th birthday party at the Clar-Mill Hall last Saturday, her sons were all there, as were her grandchildren, daughters-in-law, nieces and nephews and long-time friends. Sitting at the front with her, among the certificates from the governments of Ontario and Canada and one from Queen Elizabeth, was her aunt Agnes, who is 101 and still lives near Ompah. When it came time to take a family picture, both women pulled themselves out of their chairs, even though Agnes recently had an operation, and they walked over to be in the picture.

Back in the summer, we left some of our equipment at Lee-Anne's house when we recorded the interview. When I dropped back to collect it a few days later, I found her leaning into the back seat of her car, reaching over, with a vacuum cleaner going.

“I'm tying to get it ready for sale,” she said.

One thing that Lee White did not do was drive to her own 100th birthday party. The weather was pretty stormy that day so she took a ride from one of her sons. But she insisted that they take her brand new red truck, which they parked just out from the front door of the hall.

It's a nice looking truck - paid in full, to be sure.

There is a video below, and there is also a second video on Youyube. Click to broken arm video the clip tells the whole story of Lee-Anne's broken arm.

It was in late August that I went to interview Lee-Anne White at her home on Road 506 at Fernleigh, which at one time was a full-fledged hamlet with a post office, a store and a school, but is now only a clutch of houses around a crossroad.

I was accompanied by Jesse Mills, the videographer for the Frontenac County 150th anniversary project, and when we arrived Lee-Anne had a bandage on her leg and was limping when she opened the door for us.

“The nurse was just here this morning,” she said, “to change the dressing on my leg.”

She had hurt her leg by dropping a piece of wood on it as she was feeding the box stove in her basement to take off the morning chill a few days earlier. But though her leg was slowing her down, she still had a basin overflowing with bread dough in the kitchen and was de-frosting five pounds of ground beef to make meatballs for a family reunion that was coming up on the weekend.

Aside from her leg, something else was bothering her. Her car, a 2010 model, was in need of some work.

“They tell me that I don't drive it enough. That's why the linkage needs to be fixed and it needs new tires. I haven't told my son yet but I think I'll trade it in on a new one rather than bother with it,” she said.

Lee-Anne Kelford was born at Ompah on January 9, 1915, and this week she turns 100. She remembers the kinds of efforts that were required to survive on the Canadian shield farmland in the days before electricity, cars and other modern conveniences. What money her family made came from her father shoeing horses or milling wood, but most of the food they ate they had either grown, gathered or slaughtered from their own herds of cattle, sheep and pigs. For chairs they used burlap bags stuffed with straw or hay. They went barefoot in the summer and in the winter wore gumboots with homespun yarn straight off the sheep wrapped around them for warmth. When she was coming home from school with her brothers and sisters her mother would meet them with baskets and they had to fill the baskets with wild strawberries or raspberries on the way home. In the spring they would catch hundreds of suckers and salt them for winter eating. In the summer they picked blueberries and apples, worked in the garden and helped harvest hay and grain.

While the large 17-member Kelford family, seven brothers and seven sisters, father and mother and hard-bitten grandmother Jane Kelford, never had a lot of money, they were certainly not the poorest family around

“We were better off than those that were further down the line, I'd say. We always had enough to eat; we had cows and sheep and a big garden and a root cellar and mother was always baking biscuits or something, so we had no complaints,” said Lee Anne.

She still talks about her father's capacity to build things and make things work on their property. Although he could not read or write, he managed to build a steam-powered sawmill, a smithy and whatever the family needed to get by.

However, he may have taken on a bit much when it came to orthopedics.

When Lee-Anne was seven years old she fell out of an apple tree in an old orchard where she was picking apples with her mother. Of course there was no 911 to call. As she recalls it, she had driven the horse-drawn wagon to the orchard while her mother held her baby sister Elsie. Since her arm was broken and the bone was sticking out, her mother popped Elsie on Lee-Anne's lap and tied the baby to her so she wouldn't fall off. Her mother then drove home.

When they got back to Lee-Anne's father's wood and smith shop back at Ompah, he looked at her arm quickly and decided it needed to be set.

So, “he took an old cedar block, about 6 inches long, that was lying around,” in Lee-Anne's words, cut it and augured out the centre, then cut it again and split it to fit her small arm. He put her arm in and tied it together snugly with string, forcing the bone back into place at the same time. The next day her brother Sam got into a fight with another brother, Wyman, and Sam's wrist ended up being broken. Their father set that wrist as well.

The children then had to immerse their arms in a barrel of ice water repeatedly over the next two days, presumably to keep the swelling down. The treatment was successful in both cases - to a point. Lee-Anne was able to use her arm afterwards, but could not raise it all the way up to the top of her head, and her brother developed growths on his wrist.

At the time and to this day, after 93 years have passed, Lee White supports everything her father did that day.

“A neighbour said he should take us to a doctor but there was no doctor close by and we didn't have money to pay for a doctor anyway,” she said.

Her father lived a long life as well. He died at the age of 97 in 1977.

When Lee-Anne was older she took a job at a new lodge on Kashwakamak Lake that was opened up by an Ahr family from the United States. The lodge, which became known as the Fernleigh Lodge, is open to this day. She worked there for seven years, cooking and cleaning for over 100 guests at a time, and in the winters she worked at the Trout Lake Hotel in Ompah.

It was at Fernleigh Lodge that she met her husband, Melvin White, who was a guide in the summer and fall and trapped in the winter time. Melvin was from Plevna, and although he ran away from home at age 16, when the couple got married, Lee-Anne ended up living at Melvin's taking care of Melvin's parents and their farm for at least one winter during the 1930s, when she wasn't drawn back to Ompah to help her own family get by.

Eventually, Melvin was given a one acre piece of land on what is now Road 506 and the Whites built a 23 x 14 foot shack for themselves. Afterwards they built the house where Lee-Anne still lives on the same property (Melvin died in 2009).

“We scratched I tell you, but we never borrowed a cent in our lives. When we were building our house, with help from his half brother and uncle, I said to Melvin I'd rather eat one meal a day than go into debt.”

The couple had three sons, George, Andy and Danny. Lee-Anne ended up taking a job drawing mail from Fernleigh to Cloyne, a job she kept for 38 years.

At her 100th birthday party at the Clar-Mill Hall last Saturday, her sons were all there, as were her grandchildren, daughters-in-law, nieces and nephews and long-time friends. Sitting at the front with her, among the certificates from the governments of Ontario and Canada and one from Queen Elizabeth, was her aunt Agnes, who is 101 and still lives near Ompah. When it came time to take a family picture, both women pulled themselves out of their chairs, even though Agnes recently had an operation, and they walked over to be in the picture.

Back in the summer, we left some of our equipment at Lee-Anne's house when we recorded the interview. When I dropped back to collect it a few days later, I found her leaning into the back seat of her car, reaching over, with a vacuum cleaner going.

“I'm tying to get it ready for sale,” she said.

One thing that Lee White did not do was drive to her own 100th birthday party. The weather was pretty stormy that day so she took a ride from one of her sons. But she insisted that they take her brand new red truck, which they parked just out from the front door of the hall.

It's a nice looking truck - paid in full, to be sure.

There is a video below, and there is also a second video on Youyube. Click to broken arm video the clip tells the whole story of Lee-Anne's broken arm.